As you read, we had a thrilling day one complete with a shady inn. Well the reason for that shady inn was because it was close to San Jose. And we wanted to be close to San Jose because... we went to the Winchester Mystery House on Thursday.
So some of you may not know anything about the house, some of you may know a ton, but I'll give a super short description of the story behind it. Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Wirt Winchester (yeah, like Winchester rifles) so when he died she had a ton of money. She had seen a medium after her husband's death who told her that there was a curse on the family because Winchester rifles had killed so many people. The way to appease the spirits was to continually build and add on to the estate. Because of this the house is totally weird. There's a door that goes directly into a wall, a door to the outside of the second story (I have a picture somewhere), a staircase straight to the ceiling, and a chimney that stops just inches from the roof making it unusable. A lot of this was done to "confuse the spirits." She had a seance room near her bedroom in the house. She was obsessed with the number 13... the list of oddities goes on. But that's a good enough summary for ya here.
So we toured the house. The tour we paid for included the house and behind-the-scenes. The gardens and the rifle museum were included with the tour. So we wandered the gardens and the rifle museum. My mom returned a call I had made earlier. Tim and I had been talking about mounting hunting trophies and whether I would ever be okay with it. I mentioned that my grandma has a wolf rug somewhere so I called my mom to ask about it. She called back and confirmed that yes, grandma has a wolf rug. My great-grandpa shot it in Alaska. So now Tim wants it. Anyway, finished the rifle museum (which is all of three or four rooms) and it was time for the house tour.
The house tour was cool. I took tons of pictures because of so many people saying it's haunted. We were dorks and totally hoped we would catch something. I don't think we did. Oh well. But yeah, the house is strange. But they've tried to keep a lot of the stuff original. All the stained glass windows are still there (they do come down for refurbishing), there's a room filled with Tiffany stained glass that never got put anywhere (that translates into a few million bucks), the wallpaper was this textured stuff and it's still original. It was pretty cool. I totally coveted some of the furniture. I like some of that Victorian looking stuff.
The behind the scenes tour wasn't bad either. We got to wear some fashionable hardhats because we went down into one of the basements (yes there's more than one basement there). Our tour guide for that was really good, he knew what he was talking about.
After that tour we left. Stopped in the gift shop but didn't buy anything. On the road I cracked up. We were behind a car that had a bumper sticker. The sticker said, "Maine Bumpah Stickah for the Cah." Just say it with the Maine accent. I don't know why I found it so funny, but I laughed about it for a good ten minutes and then kept saying it all day. What can I say, I'm weird.
We were going to head down to Santa Cruz and hang out at the Boardwalk. We decided to stop and The Mystery Spot first though. If you don't know about it, I really can't explain much about it. It has something to do with the gravity being wonky there or something. Either way, it's crazy. And it's only five bucks. Go online and search it. But I'm tellin' you, the place is weird. There's a couple spots where you're standing, but you're leaning so far that your body is making a fifty degree angle to the earth. It's hard to explain.
So having been all mysterious we headed for the Boardwalk. I hadn't been in years, neither had Tim. So we walked, people watched, ate food that was horrible for us... I got my Dippin' Dots again! And we had garlic fries and beer. Dinner of champions, right? We did take some time to play in the arcade. And mini-golf. And that's the point where I cracked myself up again. I was sucking at the game big time. So at one point my ball stopped like, an inch from the damn hole. So I hit the ground on my knees and yelled at it, "Go to your home! Are you too good for your home?!" Yes, I pulled a Happy Gilmore. I thought I was hilarious. Other than that we didn't do much there. Made up stories about people as we sat around. That's always fun.
We finally left and went to our hotel. Which was in Gilroy. And for some reason Mapquest told us to take some back roads. At least it was a full moon so it made the drive through nothingness a little nicer. Got to our hotel and I realized we were right across the freeway from the outlets. I was a little depressed I couldn't shop. Okay, more than a little depressed. Anyway, we got a late dinner and just vegged in the hotel room
And that was day two. I seriously don't know how I found myself so damn amusing all day, but I did. Day three coming tomorrow. And it wasn't really interesting so hopefully it'll be shorter to save you some time.
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